Literary notes about Varmint (AI summary)
The term “varmint” is used in literature as a flexible, vernacular term that can refer either to an actual animal or serve as a pejorative label for a troublesome character. Often set against the backdrop of rural or frontier life, it conveys a sense of rugged, homespun humor while underscoring the unpredictable or deceitful nature of its subject. In some passages it vividly describes a literal creature or its remains ([1]), yet in others it functions more as a term of contempt for a person’s behavior or character ([2], [3]). Books that employ this word often use it to establish regional color and to illustrate the rough-and-tumble world in which their characters operate ([4], [5]).
- On the door hung, drying, the odorous pelt of a "varmint."
— from The Tempering by Charles Neville Buck - “Was ever such a sneaking varmint?” said one of the men; “to come on his business, and he clear out and leave us this yer way!”
— from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - A VARMINT-MAN spurns a scholarship, would consider it a degradation to be a Fellow.
— from The Public School Word-book A conribution to to a historical glossary of words phrases and turns of expression obsolete and in current use peculiar to our great public schools together with some that have been or are modish at the universities by John Stephen Farmer - If I should go back to him, the cunning varmint would suspect something, and be dodging through the trees like a frightened deer.”
— from The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper - He jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the varmint curled up and ready for another spring.
— from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
